The ways of human perversity are legion, and secretly we are glad of it, for it would be a dull world"€”a kind of ideal Switzerland raised to a higher power"€”without them. The bizarre, the wicked, and the perverse entertain us even as we condemn them or shake our heads over them in pretended ...

Over the past few years I don"€™t know how many hours I"€™ve wasted reading articles in newspapers about the Greek debt crisis. It isn"€™t as if I could have affected it in one way or the other. Moreover, newspapers these days, which cannot compete with the immediacy of the electronic media, ...

When a Nobel Prize winner can be hounded from his university chair by the harridans of the Internet (or any other self-constituted group of fanatics), the outlook for freedom of speech is not good. The West, having undergone its own Cultural Revolution, has taken up the baton of Maoist ...

No one can build a decent palace anymore. I agree that this is not one of the greatest social problems of our time, but it must nevertheless be revelatory of something economic or cultural. My first reaction when seeing President Erdogan standing at the foot of the stairs of his palace in Ankara, ...

There comes a time in any man's life when he wants to accumulate no more possessions, but rather disembarrass himself of those he already has. For otherwise he is in danger of becoming like one of those old people who throw nothing away and die among piles of old newspapers, documents, packaging, ...

Everyone supposes that he is the world authority on his own life, especially on his own thoughts and experiences. But is this really so? I began to doubt it when, the other day, I leafed through the copious notebooks that I have kept over the years. I carry a notebook with me at most times ...

Sentimentality and hardness of heart are two sides of the same coin. When sentimentality is confined to weepy films or romantic novels it does little harm and perhaps even some good, but when it is institutionalised by being made the basis of policy its denial of reality and its elevation of ersatz ...

A few days ago I received an e-mail from my British bank about my US$ account in Jersey. I have this account in Jersey because my mainland branch did not allow me to have such an account with it. The e-mail was from someone called the business standards officer:Your account with us has been brought ...

For a long time I have intended always to carry a small notebook with me when I go to second-hand bookshops to take down a list of the most boring titles ever published. Frequenters of such shops will know what I mean: A History of Banking in Costa Rica 1880 "€“ 1915, Cattle Breeding in ...

Needless to say, I feel no particular sympathy for banks: for example, my bank charges me 6.37 per cent on electronic transfers from Australia to Britain, even to an account denominated in Australian dollars. I should like an explanation of this exorbitant charge, but of course I can"€™t find ...